


capture you or set you free

by justleveledup



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Child Abuse, Flashbacks, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Scarecrow is not a good doctor obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:44:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justleveledup/pseuds/justleveledup
Summary: Edward Nygma gets assigned to Dr. Crane. Things go downhill from there.





	capture you or set you free

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this for a while and since I'm trying to actually complete things, figured I would get the ball rolling by posting this and... seeing what happens. 
> 
> I'll update this, and all my other works, eventually. I promise.

“At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen.”

Dr. Crane doesn’t blink, doesn’t twitch or answer. He just continues to sit there, across from him, smiling – so calm – and that’s what unnerves Edward the most. He doesn’t like this, being ignored; these sessions, the doctor is supposed to be getting in his head, figuring him out, finding the answers to those murders. So far all he’s done is stare at him, and it’s downright creepy. Getting in his head? Check.

“Not a fan of riddles, doc?”

Again, no answer. But Dr. Crane tilts his head, lips quirking downwards.

“Tell me, Edward: what are you trying to prove? Does the silence frighten you?”

“Of course not. I just—”

“The answer to your riddle is stars. Now, what _does_ scare you?”

* * *

 

Dr. Crane decides, after two weeks of seeing Edward on a daily basis, that Edward does not belong on the second floor. “I’m relocating you,” he tells him, his hand already wrapping around Edward’s arm to guide him. When they reach the elevator, however, they do not go up as Edward is expecting – they go down, one floor, then two, and after several moments they’re four floors beneath the ground. Solitary. They’d promised him they wouldn’t throw him down here so long as he behaved, and he had been cooperating, hadn’t he?

“I can’t be here,” Edward tells his doctor, as if that will help any. “You said, I—I gave you all the information I could.” Dr. Crane, as impassive as always, doesn’t answer, but his grip tightens on Edward’s arm.

He’ll find a way out of here, he promises himself. He did it once, he can do it again. It doesn’t mean it’s not still unsettling as hell to be down here. From the snarling behind one door, he can tell that freak Waylon Jones is still here, and the sign reading “patient must be sedated at all times” isn’t reassuring in the slightest. He doesn’t belong here. 

He fights the rising panic in his chest when Dr. Crane leads him into the only empty room in this hall, and it becomes even more difficult when Dr. Crane shuts the door behind him, the dim lighting glinting off his glasses. “You’re scared,” he says, and Edward says nothing, though he’s sure he’s losing the fight and the panic is showing.

  
Still, he has to put up a front, so he shakes his head, face set in a scowl. “Not scared,” he says, “just…” Just what, Eddie? “Just tired,” he finishes lamely, and Dr. Crane smiles.

“Of course. I have something that will help with that.”

Edward doesn’t need help sleeping, but Dr. Crane doesn’t seem to care, and presses two pills into his mouth, forcing him to swallow them dry. They taste disgusting, and the minute they’re down something begins to twist in his stomach. He wants to vomit, to heave the pills and his last meal up. Dr. Crane is watching him intently, though, and when he does finally leave, Edward is too drowsy to think of doing anything but laying back on the flat, scratchy cot he has and sleeping.

The level he’s been placed in, Edward comes to realize the next day, is hardly solitary. It’s more of a high security, and though a part of him thrills at being considered that much of a threat, he also knows it’s really not true. Compared to the other inmates – the serial killers, the nutjobs with self-inflicted tally marks in their skin – that’s who belongs down here. He hasn’t killed anyone a day in his life.

* * *

 To keep the order, the inmates are put into small groups for activities, and Edward realizes he’s been put in with the most annoying. Granted, it could be worse – he doesn’t have to deal with Waylon (“He’s like a fucking _crocodile_ , man,” one inmate had tried telling him, though he already knew), or the dude who cut himself, or the one with the acid grin. That doesn’t make his group any less crazy, though. How was he supposed to eat when the guy at the end of the table wouldn’t put that damn wooden dummy down? Or when the one next to him, who also shares the neighbouring cell, keeps quoting Alice in Wonderland?

Harvey Dent, the only one he knows by name right now because Dent had been famous back in Gotham City – and was infamous in Arkham – gives good conversation when Edward gets him talking, but the entire left side of his face looks like something out of a gore-lust movie, and he had the tendency to completely flip his lid and insist that he wasn’t Harvey, even if he was a minute ago. The other member was a girl, Harleen; a pretty little thing with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was the most talkative, preferring one-sided conversations to anything else, and was the one who told them that the kid in the cell next to her – a real nice guy, didn’t really belong here in her opinion – was supposed to be with them too, but he had been wheeled away the night Edward was brought in. Apparently he had gotten his hands on something sharp, and had carved up his face so bad he had hardly looked like himself anymore. 

Edward also discovered that the walls weren’t nearly as solid as he had presumed them to be. Or, rather, weren’t as opaque – instead, it’s two panes of reinforced glass, with a thick curtain in between. Most of the time, the curtains are drawn, so the staff can see into whatever cell they want. Losing his privacy was something Edward didn’t think he would ever get used to, but Harleen was directly across from him, and she wasn’t too bad to look at.

When he’s been down here a few weeks, he begins to suspect that Dr. Crane is starting to give him additional pills. There isn’t any more, but they feel different – instead of making him nauseous he gets a piercing migraine, and he finds himself snapping at the others more. Jervis, the Carroll weirdo, asks him whether he thought the Cheshire Cat was a villain and he punches him, which loses him two days of activities and an extra therapy session with Dr. Crane, who takes the time to question Edward about his father, something he doesn’t appreciate at all. 

* * *

 Dr. Crane visits him that night, closing the curtain so Edward has only the single light in the ceiling to make anything out. “It seems what you are on now isn’t working,” Dr. Crane remarks, setting down a small briefcase on the bed beside him. “I want to try something else. It’s experimental, of course, something I’ve been working on for a few years, but—well, you can tell me how it is.” Edward wants to push him away, but his systems have begun to shut down, and the needle is already piercing his skin.

Instantaneously, the walls begin to peel and the plain, stone floor twists and folds until it’s carpeted, and then he’s in his old childhood room and Dr. Crane is gone but his father is there, storming up the stairs, yelling and drunk and _Edward stop hidin’ and get the hell out here—_

He cries out, throws himself under his bed and sobs, and Dr. Crane looks on, unnoticed, making a note on his clipboard before leaving, locking the door behind him. He keeps the curtains pulled, and when an orderly asks he explains that Edward is to be left alone until his therapy session the next day, that his new medication will take getting used to, that he may be hysterical. The orderly, who remembers the terrible dreams she had last time she had gone against something Dr. Crane ordered, nods her assent and carries on with the other patients.


End file.
